The Afternoon Wrap: Tuesday

Yonkers is the new Brooklyn! Brit architect Will Alsop will make his U.S. debut by transforming an 80,000-square-foot power plant there into a $250 million Hudson River “residential complex featuring a museum, restaurant, and park.” [Arch. Record News]

Speaking of Brooklyn: The Department of Transportaiton has ideas to make the nightmarish Grand Army Plaza [above] slightly less nightmarish. In a nutshell: less cars; more bikes. [Streetsblog]

The Empire State building is getting feverishly scarlet tonight to celebrate the first-ever appearance of the Rutgers’ women’s basketball team in the NCAA National Championship Game. Observer real-estate reporter John Koblin, Rutgers ’05, says: “Upstream red team, red team upstream, rah rah Rutgers rah!” [Scarlet Knights]

Why have name-brand architects become such superstars? The AIA’s Center for Architecture is hosting a “BRANDISM” panel to “take a hard look at the superstar architect’s signature–both literally and stylistically.” Watch your back, Zaha! The release is after the jump. [PR]

– Max Abelson

Fourth Panel Discussion in Six-Part BRANDISM Series to Examine “Signature as Brand” in New York City Architecture and Real Estate: Anna Klingmann’s BRANDISM Series Set To Resume at AIA’s Center For Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place, April 24th at 6p.m.

NEW YORK (April 3, 2007) – “Signature as Brand,” the fourth installment of the BRANDISM panel discussion series on the recent branded architecture boom in New York City, will take place at the AIA’s Center For Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place, at 6p.m. on Tuesday, April 24th. The panel will be presented by Anna Klingmann, Ph.D., former professor of architecture at Cornell University and author of “Brandscapes – Architecture in the Experience Economy,” the soon-to-be published book from M.I.T Press.

The event, presented in association with the Center For Architecture, will take a hard look at the superstar architect’s signature – both literally and stylistically – as it relates to New York’s recent real estate boom. Moderated by Joseph Grima, director of the Storefront Gallery for Art & Architecture, the panel of architectural luminaries and the marketing experts behind them will include Daniel Libeskind of Studio Libeskind; Stanley Perelman, Managing Principal of JANI Real Estate; and Berndt Schmitt, Robert D. Calkins Professor of International Business at the Columbia Business School and Matthew Bannister, the founder of DBOX.

“In the current sales environment, star-caliber architects with signature styles have become a material commodity,” says Klingmann. “To promote a building based on its architect is not unlike promoting clothing based on its designer. There is economic security in selling a high-profile designer product, but the task of our panel members will be to explore the broader implications of this now commonplace marketing strategy.”

The six-part BRANDISM series is designed to encourage candid discussion of brand architecture, which first transformed the retail world with flagship stores such as NikeTown, BMW World and Prada and has since become the mandate for residential real estate development in New York City.